A Guitar and a Pen

by Robert Hicks

  After a quick glance at the price tag, the old black man mutters, “Jew sto’.” But even he has to admit That puss is some kinda faincy. . . . Bootiful, like fo’ a queen.

  A short time later— after money is proffered, pleasantries exchanged— she clutches the beaded black purse to her bosom as her husband holds open the front door of the theater where The Blues Brothers is playing, a new movie whose previews had made her laugh out loud when they were watching television last night after dinner.

  He pays the five-dollar admission for the two of them and says to her, “I think I’d like me a sodee pop.”

  She walks by his side to the concession stand. He orders the drink, then turns and asks his wife, “Would you like sometin’, dear?”

  Shifting her weight from foot to foot, she ponders the candy and all the bright, colorful wrappers, the smell of fresh-popped popcorn, the soft drink machine foaming and gurgling. She casually chews on the end of her fingernail and finally says, “Honey, you jus’ too good to me, drivin’ me here in that big ol’ faincy cah ’n’ all.” She brushes some lint from his shoulder.“And I got me a puss prettier than mos’ everything I ever done seen. No . . . I’s fine. I don’t need nothin’. Besides”— she pulls at his collar to take out a crease and flicks more smutz from his shoulder—“what else is there?— ’ceptin you?”

  The old black man reaches over and affectionately strokes his wife’s cheek. He takes a mouthful of his drink, loudly sucking the carbonated pop through the red-and-white-striped straw. It’s cold. And syrupy. And his teeth sting.

  The aqua Lincoln Mark IV with the white leather trim sits out front in the theater parking lot. Still shiny. Like new. On the passenger seat is a card that is open. Face up. It reads:

  Damascus and Pearline—

  Congratulations on your 40th wedding anniversary. Thank you, again, for walking into my life and forever changing it.

  I’m now New Car Manager at Alexandria Lincoln Mercury. Come by and see me whenever you need a new one, or just stop in and say, “Hey!”

  All the best,

  Don

  In a blustering wind that sweeps the parking lot clean, the 1972 Lincoln Mark IV has fifty-three miles on the odometer now. The engine is warm.

  Damascus doesn’t enjoy the film on the whole. Too damn loud, but he loves it when Aretha sings in the restaurant. He remembered where he was the day he first heard Aretha sing “Respect”— walking across the parking lot of Top’s Bar BQ in Memphis, Tennessee, on Poplar Avenue, sandwich in hand, a mouth stuffed full of pork and slaw, sauce dripping down his chin. He could still taste the pungent juices of the smoked meat, the sweet crunch of the slaw, and he could feel the bounce in his step hearing the voice of the Queen of Soul blasting from the outdoor speakers, “ R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me,” just like it was yesterday.

  Pearline laughs throughout the movie, holding on to her new purse as if her life depended on it. Her stomach pains her, but she does her best to ignore it and laughs till she cries, tears melting down her face, over hands that try to conceal sniffles, providing balm for the hurt that burns her deep, farther than she can ascribe or comprehend.

  When they leave, Damascus holds open the theater doors for his wife and the dank night air rushes in, taking her breath away, making his eyes water. She flings her floral cardigan over her shoulders and hugs her chest.

  As one, they walk across a parking lot pocked with light, a light that erases and blots the darkness that seeps like ink, devouring the dingy, stagnant town if only for a night. He vows to tell his wife of her tumor first thing in the morning. The doctor had given him the news a few days ago, abdicating to his wishes for him to be the one to tell her. Further tests need to be conducted to see if the grapefruit-sized tumor in her abdomen is malignant, or benign, but the words haven’t found a way out of him yet. Whenever he works up the courage to tell her, the words wrap around his chest and his throat and squeeze the very air from his lungs, silencing him as if an invisible, formless thief has stolen away with the means quite unexpectedly. He invokes God. He feels trepidation. Any minute he will fall facefirst off the cliff’s edge and be dashed to nothingness.

  Pearline looks at him, knowing full well and why, and says, “I sure do loves you, you hurly-burly ol’ main,” and plants a full, plum-lipped kiss on his scratchy cheek, a four-day growth rasping her chin, the tip of her nose tingling from the bristle of his whiskers.

  He opens the car door for her. She slides onto the leather seat and looks up at her husband. Damascus smiles at her. A crooked smile. Pearline smiles back, a smile so big and wide a pair of half-moon dimples escape the clouds momentarily and frame her dark chocolate eyes, eyes that glow with an inner fire all their own, embers smoldering with the manna of the ages.

  “Honey?” he says.

  “Yeah?” she says.

  “I jus’ loves to see you smile.” Then he shuts the car door with care, taking note of the solid, reassuring clunk that makes him feel safe, protected.

  The silence is broken by a chorus of laughter; two white teenage couples are walking hand in hand in the parking lot, carefree, their heads thrown back, mouths open wide, letting freedom ring and ring and ring. Lit roman candles. All full up, swollen to bursting.

  Walking around the front of the car to the driver’s side, Damascus runs his hand over the burning cold of the chrome bumper and grows older . . . and more afraid.

  Pearline opens the vanity mirror. She studies her eyes, her aquiline nose, her brace of straight, white teeth, and thinks, I nevah felt mo’ ’live, and giggles at a reflection she now recognizes, her dimples healing a blind world. On a mission from Gawd? . . . Ohhh my lands . . .

  Dony Wynn

  Dony Wynn was born in the year of 19-and-56 to Don and Barbara Jean Wynn. They raised him good. Proper like.

  Whilst still in diapers, listening to 45s with his folks, he was ceremoniously struck a wicked blow courtesy of a rhythm stick. Because of his natural proclivity thereafter for beats and such, he left the familial nest earlier than most, traveling, living dang near all over the globe for the better part of twenty years or so, smackin’ drums and gleanin’ a world-class education under the tutelage of one singin’ fool, master in the art of living well, Robert Palmer. Spent a fair amount of time makin’ butts move with Dr. John, Steve Winwood, Blondie, Patti LaBelle, Wang Chung, and Brooks & Dunn, too. He still makes a racket now and then when he feels so inclined, so inspired.

  He lives in Austin, Texas, now. Plumb happy about that. Had disappeared from the world for an extended period and returned to civilization diversified and emboldened, finding himself now serving the cruel mistress that is music in a variety of ways and means whilst he has added pounding his computer keyboard with nary a grain of mercy, seriously gettin’ all his yayas out, as is his wont, his need.

  Alas, the creative flood, she will not abate.

  He wonders what trouble woulda befell him—and, in turn, the public at large—if he didn’t beat on somethin’ all this lifetime? Goodness gracious. Lordy. The mind reels. . . .

  The Clock Struck Nine

  Hal Ketchum

  Marta woke before dawn. She lay still, her eyes closed. Her hands were folded across her chest. She listened to the old house sigh in the stillness. All was right in the world. She rose, dressed, crept past her parents’ room, out the door, into the street.

  She crossed the square, saw no one but an old man and a pack of dogs.

  Three streets down, she slipped into a house.

  Twenty minutes later she walked to the corner, boarded the seven-o’clock bus.

  She paid the driver and went to the back.

  She rode in a strange silence. The world had stopped and she alone had continued.

  As time passed, the landscape changed from sparse villages to congested housing projects. With each stop, a few more people boarded. College students, businessmen, a woman in mourning clothes. No one looked at her.

  She was invisible. Already
gone.

  The bus entered the city. Marta checked her watch.

  7:52.

  She quickly calculated, determined that she had plenty of time to reach her destination. She had to be inside the train station by nine o’clock. That’s when she would explode.

  She felt under her robes. The package taped there felt cold against her skin. Nineteen years old and already a holy warrior. Her thoughts went to the glory of her cause; she tried to hold them there. Sadly, she could only do so for a few seconds at a time. No matter how she tried, she could not erase the vision of her parents in tears.

  After a few more stops, she realized the bus was no longer moving. She looked out the front, saw rows and rows of dirty vehicles going nowhere. She decided to leave the bus and walk. Just ten blocks to the station.

  She wove her way along the busy street. Moved in rhythm with the people she intended to kill. She averted her eyes as she passed two soldiers. Up ahead, through the crowd, she could see the station.

  8:32.

  She pressed on, caught up in her own doom.

  8:47.

  Up the stairs, through the doors, into the station.

  She stood for a moment and scanned the great hall.

  She saw the fountain below the large clock. The ideal spot.

  8:52.

  She wove her way through the innocent, as if they were standing still. Ghosts of ghosts. Tall men, porters, mothers, babies.

  8:55.

  She reached the fountain feeling exhilarated.

  She turned. Something hit her from behind. She watched an old woman sprawl across the floor. The contents of her bag sailed through the air, landing at Marta’s feet. Marta bent down, gathered the old woman’s belongings. The old woman knelt before her and smiled.

  8:57.

  Marta panicked. She tried to look away. But the old woman’s eyes held her.

  Suddenly life seemed more sacred than death. In a single motion, Marta reached beneath her robes and pulled at the wires on the hidden explosives.

  There would be no sorrow today.

  Marta met the old woman’s gaze with a smile.

  The old woman became pure light and vanished.

  The clock struck nine.

  Hal Ketchum

  Hal Ketchum blazed onto the music scene in the early 1990s, when he struck record gold with his first single, “Small Town Saturday Night,” which shot to number one on the country charts. Since then, he has had fifteen top-ten hits, sold over four million records, and has had his songs recorded by artists ranging from Neil Diamond to Trisha Yearwood. Recently Hal said, “I love my live shows, getting in front of my people, they give me the drive and enthusiasm to make more music.” In 1994, Hal became a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and he often hosts the television show Opry Live, which airs on Saturday nights on the Great American Country Network (GAC), with his “Opry Family.”

  Hal lives in Nashville with his wife of ten years, Gina, and their three children, Fani Rose, Ruby Joy, Sophia Grace, and their dog, Sam. Rumor has it that his is the only estate in Nashville with a tomahawk target field, for the man of the house to get his practice in when he comes off the road to relax and unwind with a friendly “game of throwing hawks.” He also works on his other passion: art. Since his original artwork sold out at his first gallery show in Sante Fe, New Mexico, in 2004, Hal has pursued his art by illustrating a children’s book series with Gina. You can visit his Web site at www.halketchum.com.

  Of Guitars & Righteous Men

  Janis Ian

  “There are men who steal silver, and men who steal gold

  “But the worst kind of thief is the man who steals your soul.”

  It started with my father, who made the transition from chicken farmer to music teacher when I was around three.

  Actually, it started with my dad’s membership in various socialist organizations, since he needed a guitar to take to the meetings when he led them in singing.

  No, I guess it started before that, when he bought The Guitar.

  He bought it in 1948, from the widow of a farmer who’d had it lying around in the attic for years. When she asked what Dad thought it was worth, he replied “I dunno—twenty-five bucks?” He brought it home three years before I was born, and began learning to play. It was rural New Jersey; there weren’t exactly a lot of other guitarists around. Somehow, he got a Weavers songbook with chord diagrams, subscribed to Sing Out! magazine, and we were on our way.

  I grew up with that guitar. It was miles too big for me, a colorful, beat-up window into another world. My small fingers could barely fit around the neck. As I began learning chords, I discovered new ways of fingering them to compensate for my size. To this day, I play a D chord “wrong.” By the age of eleven, I was arguing over technique; when we went to see friends whose sons played with fingerpicks and they insisted that was what “real” guitarists did, I just sneered.

  It helped that The Guitar went everywhere with us: to summer camp, where my father obtained eight-week stays for his children by teaching music for nothing; to my grandparents’, where we went every weekend to pick up groceries from my grandfather the bagger. It went with Dad to work, it went with us to play.

  The guitar you grow up with, the guitar you learn to play on, is a special thing. It doesn’t matter much whether it’s expensive, pretty, or even playable—it trains you. I wrote my first song on that guitar in my twelfth year, eventually playing it to a captive audience from the backseat of our car. I remember my mother turning and staring at me, wondering what had happened to the child she thought she was raising.

  We did everything wrong. I faithfully polished it with cheap lemon oil once a month—everywhere. Fretboard, pickguard, if you were attached to my guitar you got polished. When it buzzed, I’d fold over a cardboard match-cover and stick it under the string, right up at the nut; that always worked. I took apart the tuning machines and cleaned them periodically, squirting them with WD-40 to keep them moving.

  When a waitress dropped a tray on it, we had no idea where to go for repairs in East Orange, New Jersey, so my father just asked around for a good instrumental woodworker. A violin-maker in Newark rebuilt the top, reglued the braces, and installed a larger, heavier bridge plate. Having no idea how to take care of a valuable instrument, we went on instinct and Mechanic’s Weekly. In return, The Guitar played, and played, and played.

  At thirteen, I learned to write a lead sheet with it, sent the song into Broadside magazine, and was invited to play at the Village Gate. The Guitar and I got a standing ovation; we were on our way.

  One day another performer mentioned that it was a Martin D-18, from 1937, the “pre-war years.” He explained that the best wood came from then, and the best dreadnaughts. When I got home I said, “Dad! Dad! This is a Martin guitar!” He shrugged.“Yep, honey, it’s a guitar. I knew that.” I’d read about Martins somewhere, but it had never occurred to me that Dad’s beat-up old instrument could have been made by anyone. It just was.

  It became My Guitar when my father gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. By then, my guitar and I had recorded two albums together, met Leonard Bernstein, been on The Tonight Show, and done concerts from coast to coast. We’d lived through my first hit, “Society’s Child,” getting spit on and booed off the stage by crowds chanting “Nigger lover!” We’d earned each other.

  We survived being called has-beens a few hitless years later, and we wrote “Jesse” two years after that. Through the dark times, one of us, at least, had remained universally admired. Vinnie Bell, legendary New York studio musician, had offered me $5,000 for it—in 1966! Artists like Jimi Hendrix would greet me and say, “How’s The Guitar doing, man? What a sweetheart!”

  It was an extraordinary instrument, a 1937 D-18 that somehow, through a combination of wood, break-in, temperature, humidity, and just plain love, wound up being the best acoustic guitar any of them had ever heard. Reverend Gary Davis would beg to borrow it at folk festivals; other artists kept offering me money.


  Why? It had the best bass tone I’d ever heard on a guitar, bar none. And, unusual in a guitar from that era, it sounded as good picked as strummed, flat-picked as frailed. I moved to Los Angeles in 1972 and took her with me (somehow, over the years, she’d become “her”—my closest confidante, dearest companion), hoping the more temperate climate would be good for my aging friend. One day I came back from a morning at the beach to find my apartment burglarized—and although clothing had been flung from the drawers and the place was a mess, all my credit cards and jewelry were left where they’d been. The only things missing were a rented television and my two guitars. Ironically, I’d bought a Gallagher just months earlier, having decided the road was too dangerous for my Martin.

  I called the police; they were pessimistic, saying a large ring specializing in stolen guitars had been operating in L.A. for months. I called Martin Guitars, registering it as stolen. I canvassed the apartment complex. I telephoned every pawn shop in the Los Angeles area, offering a reward for any scrap of information. Then I sat, dulled by fatigue and pain, waiting and hoping.

  The phone rang two days later; a young man had pawned my Gallagher, demanding exactly what it was worth “like he knew what he was doing.” He’d used his draft card for ID. A few days later, the police picked him up.

  I went to court and testified that I hadn’t given him permission to borrow My Guitar. The detectives (knowing he already had a thirteen-page rap sheet) threatened him, trying to break the ring. And although it was illegal, I desperately offered him a $2,000 reward if he’d just bring it back, no questions asked. In the end, he chose to do three to five years of hard time rather than reveal anything.

  That was the end of that. I mourned for years—twenty-six of them, to be exact. Nothing in my life—not breakups, not the death of beloved friends and family, not the loss of every dime I had in 1986—nothing affected me more deeply. You may think that’s crazy, but then again, maybe you’ve never owned a guitar like this one.